High in the Clean Blue Air by StarSpray  

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Forty Four

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After everyone had decided where they would sleep and who was sharing a room with who—Maedhros would be welcoming Curufin into his room, since Maglor and Daeron had taken the guest room that he usually stayed in when visiting, and Caranthir was the only one willing to let Huan into his bedroom along with Celegorm—Maedhros was able to escape out into the garden for quiet and at least the illusion of solitude. He sat on the ground under the hawthorn tree, and was soon joined by Leicheg as she trundled along in her search for whatever it was hedgehogs ate. 

Nerdanel’s glimpse of his wounds, though they were healing very well, had gone as well as Maedhros had expected. She had not lectured, but he wished that she had instead of giving him a look of such worry. He always worried her, but this had made it worse, and he still didn’t know how to fix it. “I would very much like to have as few concerns as you,” he told Leicheg, who paid him absolutely no mind. She snuffled through the leaves and then vanished around the tree trunk. He sighed and leaned back against it; the bark was smooth, and the breeze made the leaves rustle gently overhead. From upstairs he heard a peal of bright laughter—Maglor’s, soon joined by Daeron’s—slightly muffled by the closed window. Downstairs, the windows were open, and he could hear Ambarussa and Caranthir in the kitchen talking of dinner.

Celegorm and Curufin emerged from the house before long, and of course they came straight to Maedhros. “There you are,” said Celegorm, holding out his hand. “Come on, we have something to show you.”

“We haven’t even been home half a day,” Maedhros said, even as he accepted the hand up. “What have you done now?”

“It’s nothing bad,” said Curufin. 

“We asked Ammë and Grandfather to set it up,” Celegorm added. He pulled Maedhros around to the other side of Nerdanel’s large workshop, where there was a smaller building that was, as far as Maedhros knew, only used to store the tools and supplies Nerdanel did not use often enough to want them always near at hand, though it had been built as a second smaller studio. When they stepped inside, though, he found all of those things gone, and instead a clean, bright space with whitewashed walls and an easel and a supply of canvases leaning against one wall, and shelves of various kinds of paints, jars of brushes, palettes for mixing, and various other tools and things along another. A drawing table stood by one of the large windows that looked out toward the garden, just by the door. A few lamps hung from the ceiling, but they were not really needed, since the sun would provide all the light needed throughout the day.

Maedhros looked at it all, and turned to look at his brothers. “You asked Ammë for this?”

“You said at Midsummer you were thinking about painting,” Curufin said. 

“We knew if we left it up to you, you’d never start, no matter what you said,” added Celegorm. “So now you have everything you need, and no excuse not to.”

He didn’t know what to say. His throat felt tight, but he didn’t want to cry, not over this. Celegorm and Curufin just waited, while he looked around again. “Thank you,” he said finally. “But I don’t—I don’t know if I can—”

“You can,” said Curufin. “You thought so at Midsummer.”

That sunset at Midsummer, though still very clear in his mind, felt as though it had happened years ago, rather than just a couple of months. Maedhros knew that he had been better—he’d felt more like a person, had been able to act more like one, more like the older brother that Celegorm and Curufin had needed. He knew, also, that he’d slid back into old habits and patterns, but he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten out of them in the first place, and didn’t know how to do it again. It still felt like his, of all hands, could never expect to take up a brush and paint and make something beautiful out of it. 

Celegorm and Curufin exchanged a glance, and then Celegorm left them, pausing only to wrap his arms around Maedhros for a moment, squeezing hard. When he was gone, Curufin said, “It doesn’t have to be good, you know. You don’t ever have to show anyone. We just—Moryo said you used to destroy all your drawings after you finished them. You haven’t done that lately, and you said…”

“I know.” Maedhros held out his arms, and Curufin stepped into them. “I meant it,” he said. “Thank you. And I did mean it at Midsummer when I talked about painting. I just—”

“It’s not going to make Maglor forgive you,” Curufin said, “but it’ll give you something else to think about, when he leaves.” 

Maedhros had been trying not to think about Maglor leaving. It was painful and uncomfortable to have him there, but watching him ride away, even knowing he would be close by, would be worse. He did not, he realized, want any of his brothers to leave, even though it wouldn’t be fair to ask them to stay. Their journey out into the wilds had done what Celegorm and Ambarussa had intended. It hadn’t fixed everything, but it had put them on the path toward it—they would come back more often, Maedhros was sure, and he would miss them when they left, in a way he hadn’t before when he was too caught up in his own head, wishing to be back in Mandos. 

And when had he stopped wishing for that?

“It took me years,” Curufin added after a moment, “to remember how to make something that wasn't a weapon, that I didn’t have to melt back down halfway through the making, and even longer to remember how to make something that I enjoyed making. I have a box of things in my workshop that aren’t lovely or useful, but that I like anyway because the process made me happy. Either I learned something new or I remembered something I had forgotten, or I was just—just having fun. Tyelpë has such a box too. You can do the same thing. And don’t just say that you don’t remember how to have fun. You had fun on the trip out to Ekkaia.”

“Maybe,” said Maedhros. “I’ll try, Curvo.”

“That’s all we’re asking.”

They returned to the dining room for dinner; it was bustling and a little chaotic, far more like their youth than like the afternoon they’d spent there debating what to do about their father—that also felt like a lifetime ago. Nerdanel sat at the head of the table and insisted that Maglor sit by her. It so happened he chose the seat to her right, the one that had been left empty before, when they’d gathered like allies rather than brothers. Maedhros chose a seat at the other end of the table, and tried to pretend he didn’t notice the way his mother kept glancing his way. 

“Have you told her yet that you and Cáno…?” Amrod whispered to Maedhros halfway through the meal. Maedhros shook his head. There hadn’t been a chance to explain, and he didn’t even know how to begin.

Just after dinner a messenger arrived, stopping on her way from Imloth Ningloron to Tirion. “Tyelpë has been keeping me informed of all that is going on,” Nerdanel told them as she opened the letter. It wasn’t long. “I’ll write back to him in the morning to tell him you’ve all arrived here. If anyone else wishes to write a letter of your own, give it to me tomorrow and I’ll send it along.” 

“What’s the latest news?” Caranthir asked. 

“Indis and Míriel are there now, along with Findis and Lalwen. They arrived last week.”

“I’m sure that’s going well,” Curufin muttered. 

“Findis gave Fëanáro a black eye, and knocked him into the fish pond,” Nerdanel added after a moment as she continued to read the letter. Everyone turned to stare at her, wide-eyed. Daeron put a hand over his mouth as though to stifle laughter. “But aside from that, Tyelpë says everyone is getting along remarkably well.”

“Really?” Ambarussa chorused. 

“Aunt Findis?” added Caranthir. “Not Lalwen?”

“Tyelpë has also included the lyrics to a song that someone wrote about it already,” Nerdanel added. “It’s very silly.” 

Silly, Maedhros thought, was the last word he would have expected to describe a song about Fëanor. Getting punched by Findis and falling into Celebrían’s pond was also one of the last things he would have expected. It should have been funny, except he didn’t think he could find anything concerning his father amusing.

“Lindir is good at those sorts of songs,” Maglor remarked, voice odd and distant. “He wrote a dozen of them earlier this year about the feud between Huan and Pídhres.”

“Huan doesn’t feud,” Celegorm protested.

“I never said so,” said Maglor with a brief smile. “It’s entirely one-sided.” Pídhres was curled around his shoulders, and meowed as though in acknowledgment. Huan, sprawled on the floor by the hearth though there was no fire there, with Leicheg tucked comfortably between his front paws, thumped his tail once. 

“Has Tyelpë said when they intend to all leave Imloth Ningloron?” Curufin asked then, keeping his gaze lowered and his hands busy with some small thing he’d found that needed repairing. 

“They were beginning to prepare to leave as he was writing this, yesterday,” Nerdanel said. “I expect we’ll see their party pass by in the next few days.” She scanned the rest of the letter before folding it up again. 

Maedhros hoped no one would stop when they passed Nerdanel’s house. He did not think that Fëanor would, but so far Fëanor had not done anything that anyone had expected. He glanced at Maglor, but found him turned away, whispering with Daeron. Maedhros couldn’t see either of their faces. Then he caught Celegorm’s eye, and found his own dread mirrored there. 

Nerdanel called then for stories of their journeys, both together and separate. Maedhros let the others speak. He sat on the floor near Huan, and Celegorm came to sprawl out beside him, his legs across Maedhros’ lap and his head on Huan’s side. Across the room Nerdanel sat as though holding court with all of them; Maglor sat at her feet, and after a while, inevitably, she asked him for some music. He obliged without hesitation, bringing out his harp as Daeron produced his flute, and they played songs that Maedhros didn’t know, hymns to Elbereth, and others that Maglor said were often sung in Rivendell, of trees and starlight on the river, of sunshine and rain, and the Misty Mountains rising up like sentinels above. Maedhros knew what Rivendell looked like, from the tapestry that hung in Elrond and Celebrían’s dining hall. Maglor’s songs brought it to life in a way that thread or paint never could. The songs were almost all merry ones, but Maedhros could still hear that thread of sadness wound throughout, even when Maglor seemed to try to banish it. He had loved that place, and he missed it.

It was a quiet ending to the evening, peaceful. Maedhros slipped away first, tired and not wanting to be cornered by anyone to talk more about the journey or about himself. It was a relief to sink onto his own bed, onto a mattress and clean blankets that smelled of lavender rather than horses. Curufin followed him only a few minutes afterward, and before he closed the door Maedhros heard the sounds of everyone else making their way to bed. “Are you all right?” Curufin asked. 

“Yes.” Maedhros pulled his hair free of its braid and used his fingers to tease out the worst still-damp tangles. “I’m just—I’m tired.”

“It was a long journey.”

“Mm.”

“How’s your arm?”

“It’s fine. It doesn’t hurt at all anymore.”

“And—and your hand?”

“Also fine.” Maedhros twisted his hair back into a braid; he’d gotten out of the habit of doing it himself over the course of the summer, but it didn’t matter if it was clumsy and uneven if he was just going to sleep in it. When he finished he held his palm out for Curufin to see. The scar-memory was barely visible in the soft lamplight. Curufin looked at it and seemed to relax a little. “I will start painting, Curvo. I promise.” And when he painted that sunset, he would send it to Curufin in Tirion. It might not be good, but maybe Curufin could hang it near that box of ugly but enjoyable things that he had made.

“Good.” 

Maedhros wanted to ask him not to worry, but that would just get him scolded again. He sank back onto his pillow with a sigh. Curufin shifted around a little beside him before settling likewise. The other quiet rustlings of the house preparing for bed slowly faded. Outside a night bird sang, and crickets chirped; the wind blew through the branches of the hawthorn tree. It was all familiar and comforting as the blankets and pillows of his bed, and sleep came far more quickly than Maedhros had thought it would. 

He couldn’t delay his mother’s questions forever, though. He woke early in the morning, just after dawn when the light was pale and the sky was an almost colorless shade of blue, and left Curufin still sleeping to make his way downstairs. Nerdanel was awake, just finishing her letter to Celebrimbor. There was another letter, folded up and sealed already, waiting on the table, with Elrond’s name written across it in Maglor’s hand. “Good morning, Maitimo,” said Nerdanel as she signed her name. She looked up at him with a smile. “Did you sleep well?”

“Yes.” He bent down to kiss her before going to pour himself tea. 

“I want to speak to you,” Nerdanel said as he mixed a spoonful of honey into his cup. “I want to speak to both you and Macalaurë, but he disappeared upstairs again as soon as he’d dropped off his letter for Elrond.”

“I’m not—there isn’t much to say, Ammë.”

“Then it shouldn’t take long,” she said briskly. She folded the letter and sealed it. Maedhros sat down with her at the table, unable to meet her gaze as he should. “What’s happened between you? You spoke not a single word to one another last night, and from what your brothers have said and have been careful not to say, it seems you’ve hardly spoken at all since you met at Ekkaia. How can you cross the whole of Valinor without a single conversation?”

“We’ve spoken, Ammë,” Maedhros said quietly. “We spoke by Ekkaia, and on the journey back.”

“Did your brothers have to trap you in the tent to do it? What is the matter, Maitimo?”

“I died. I led him into ruin and then I left him.” Maedhros didn't look up from his tea. “He can’t forgive that.”

“Maitimo…”

“I never expected him to. Please don’t corner him about it. It’s hard enough without everyone trying to push us together.”

“You should not be at odds like this, Maitimo.”

They weren’t at odds, though. In this they were in perfect agreement: Maedhros had shattered the trust between them when he chose death, abandoning Maglor to thousands of years of lonely grief, and neither he nor Maglor knew how to fix it. “I’m sorry, Ammë, I just…I left him alone, when I knew that was the one thing that he dreaded most.”

“Maitimo.” Nerdanel covered his hand with hers. “Are you going to try to claim that you were thinking clearly when you left the world? There is nothing that distorts the mind like despair. You know that.”

“I do know that. And I wasn’t. But it doesn’t matter what I thought—it’s what I did, and what he suffered because of it.” Maedhros turned his hand to squeeze Nerdanel’s for a moment. “And now—he had to see Atar before he was ready, and then met the rest of us where he never expected to. He only traveled back here with us to see you. Please don’t try to…”

“I am going to speak to him about it,” Nerdanel said. “I cannot do otherwise, Maitimo. I am your mother, and I can’t bear to see you both so unhappy. Do you not want to be reconciled?”

“Of course I do.” He even thought that Maglor wanted it—but wanting wasn’t enough. If it was, none of this would hurt as much as it did. “Ammë, just—he needs time. Please don’t push. You weren’t there at the end. You don’t know what it was like—for me or for him.”

“I won’t push, but I won’t ignore it either. For things that happened so long ago to still be—”

“What I did left him alone for six thousand years, Ammë. I am not the only one who despaired,” Maedhros said. “I could not let Mandos work on me, but he never even got the chance to—” A soft thump and a squeak made them both turn, leaning over to see the bottom of the stairs where Leicheg was making her way very carefully down the last few steps. Pídhres sat at the bottom grooming herself while she waited. 

“Maitimo, why is there a hedgehog in my house?”

“Maglor and Daeron,” Maedhros said. 

“Why do they have a hedgehog?”

“From what they’ve said, I’m not sure they really had a choice in the matter.”

Leicheg jumped off the last step, landing with her legs splayed on the tile for a moment before she recovered herself. She scurried after Pídhres, who trotted toward the kitchen door and the garden outside. Nerdanel shook her head and rose to put water on for more tea, as doors began to open upstairs and other footsteps heralded the waking of the rest of the household. Maedhros took his cup and escaped outside—to the painting studio. Anything to distract himself, he thought as he shut the door behind him. He opened the windows to let in the breeze and birdsong, and went to look at the various paints and pigments that had been set out on the shelves. It was a little overwhelming, looking at them all. 

He’d learned to draw and paint long ago, at the same time he had learned to carve wood and throw clay and to work the forge, and all the other things his parents either deemed necessary for him to know, or which he decided he wished to learn himself. No particular art or craft had ever called to him—not like music called to Maglor, or the forge called to his father and Curufin—but there had been joy in the learning, in collecting skills the way that Maglor collected songs and Celegorm used to collect pebbles and dried flowers. He’d put all those various skills to use in Beleriand—or nearly all of them, though never to make anything beautiful. Himring had grown to be beautiful in his eyes, in time, but he hadn’t designed it that way. He’d wanted strength, safety, something that would endure. 

So it has, he thought. Himring had, against all odds, survived the ravages of Beleriand, even its sinking, and was only slowly succumbing to weather and water and the inexorable, inevitable ravages of time. For a moment he felt terribly, achingly homesick for it—for the cold winds that swept over the ramparts, for his own bedchamber that had begun as austere as the rest but which had been filled, slowly, with rugs and tapestries and blankets and other gifts from his brothers and cousins and various friends and allies until it had become a place of comfort, of escape and refuge. He missed the wide plains that surrounded the hill, and the view of the Ered Luin to the east and Ard-Galen to the northwest, and the way the skies had seemed enormous, often cloudless, a bright clean and clear blue that he had never seen anywhere else, and which he knew he would never be able to replicate with paint, no matter how skilled he became. It had been his, his designs, his hand that helped to lay the first stones of the foundation, the only thing it seemed that he had ever gotten right.

In this new life, where there was no need for fortresses or walls or swords, he’d taken up drawing again because his mother had suggested it, because she’d insisted that he needed to be doing something, and that at least was one thing that did not need two hands. He’d kept it up because it had helped—it helped to quiet his thoughts and stop them circling, even if nothing he’d drawn for a long time had been anything worth sharing. When it was recognizable it was terrible—memories of dark days, of terrible places, of blood and fire and blades. He’d burned those, but he suspected Caranthir had managed to catch a glimpse of them once or twice. He wondered, now, if he’d needed to draw all of those horrible things to pull them out of himself, like purging poison. This summer he had begun to draw what was before him, or things out of his memories that weren’t also out of his nightmares—he’d had to, lest one of his brothers look over his shoulder and see what still haunted him—but it had been so much easier than he’d thought it would be. There was satisfaction in it, rather than painful catharsis.

His brothers thought that he could take these paints and do something beautiful. Maedhros picked up a jar of blue pigment, rich and deep. They had been right about other things, and though he had his doubts, he supposed it would be better to trust their instincts than his own. He did want to try; he didn’t know what held him back. He set the jar back down, and looked at the canvases lined up along the wall, and at the easel—easels, really. There were two very sturdy ones set up there, one larger than the other, and by the door was a third, smaller and easier to break down and carry if he decided he wanted to work somewhere else. They’d thought of everything, it seemed. 

When he left the little studio he found his grandfather and his uncle coming around from the front courtyard. “Russandol!” Mahtan said, smiling broadly and opening his arms. “I missed seeing you all arrive yesterday. Welcome back! How was your journey?”

“Long,” Maedhros said, stepping into his arms. He was taller than Mahtan, but Mahtan was broader, and always stronger.

His uncle Linquendil stepped forward after Mahtan released Maedhros for a hug of his own. “Welcome back, Nephew. Did we hear truly that Macalaurë returned with you?”

“Yes, he did.” Maedhros didn’t want to dampen their joy, but he also couldn’t summon a smile of his own. But maybe they only attributed that to his inability to smile much in general.

At the sound of Mahtan’s voice, Maedhros’ brothers all streamed out of the house to greet him and Linquendil. Nerdanel followed; Maglor came last, and hung back. His shoulders hunched a little, and his hair slipped forward to half-cover his face. But when Mahtan spotted him and nearly picked him off the ground with the force of his embrace, his smile seemed genuine, and he did not actually shrink back from the meeting. The smile faded when Mahtan and Linquendil noticed the scars and the strands of white in his hair, but neither of them asked for an explanation; Mahtan only hugged him again. Maglor hid his face in their grandfather’s shoulder; if he said something, Maedhros couldn’t hear it. 

They did not ask Maglor what had happened, but Linquendil did take Maedhros aside to ask him. “What are those scars, Russo? What happened to him across the Sea?”

“He was held captive for a time by the Enemy,” said Maedhros. “It was many years ago now. Please don’t ask him about it, Uncle. Everyone has been since he arrived, and he doesn’t like to speak of it.”

“Of course I won’t ask him,” Linquendil said. “That is why I’m asking you. How did he survive?”

“He was rescued. Galadriel, I think, was there, alongside Elrond’s sons and Glorfindel.”

“You think? Do you not know the full tale?”

“No. I don’t need to. He found healing in Galadriel’s realm and then in Elrond’s, and now he is here. That is enough.” It was hard to walk the line between never wanting to speak of what had happened to you, while needing others to know that it had happened, and that it had shaped so much of who you now were. Maedhros had never spoken of the torments he had endured in Angband, not even to Maglor or to Fingon. He had had scars from it—fewer than Maglor had from Dol Guldur, for Morgoth had not been interested in his disfigurement—and they had spoken for themselves. Now—now he wanted even less to speak of it, but he was glad that had had come from Mandos one-handed. It was proof that it had happened, and it was something those who had only known him in his youth, like his uncle, could not ignore. It was a sign that he was not who he had been before, changed by both the suffering and the saving, no matter what his face looked like.

Even if, someday, beyond hope, they did find themselves able to speak to each other again, Maedhros would never ask Maglor what happened to him in Dol Guldur. He knew that their brothers had asked—they had asked him about Angband, too—and he couldn’t really blame them, but even they couldn’t understand. Maglor would have told them as little as possible, only enough to give them some small semblance of understanding so that they wouldn’t have to ask again, but never speaking of the full horror of it. Some tales were better left untold, even if they could never be forgotten. He glanced back across the yard and met Maglor’s gaze. Maglor didn’t look away; in that moment, they understood one another as well as they ever had—and for the first time, Maedhros wished they didn’t.